New World Notes readers are having a great time predicting the state of Second Life this new year, so here's seven predictions of my own.
By the end of 2010:
- Second Life will see relatively strong user growth, exceeding 1.25 million monthly uniques and 125,000 peak concurrency
- The OpenSimulator user base will not grow much, remaining below 20K monthly uniques
- Second Life log-ins through Facebook Connect will be enabled
The new SL viewer and registration process, coupled to an improved e-commerce site and the first substantial marketing push, will add substantial growth to the monthly recurring unique user base, moving it from the 750K we have now to 500K more.
Since checking it last June, the number of monthly OpenSim users remains at less than 10K, suggesting 15K overall. There's no reason to believe this number will grow much further (unless and until Second Life also sees strong growth.)
This is partly wishful thinking, but it's such an obvious and seemingly easy move, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't put into motion.
I agree with the plurality of my readers who took this survey, and see the customer base going from 14 to about twice that number.
As the customer base for Apple's phone (and iPod Touch) continues rapidly growing, this is another one of those a priori no-brainer dealies. With an official iPhone app, the Lindens could enable in-app purchase of Linden Dollars and better encourage augmented reality goodness. If that happens, Touch Life from Pocket Metaverse is the likeliest candidate.
The immediate appeal of the CryEngine to online gamers will drive strong interest in the Honolulu-based virtual world. Note that I say "registrations", not recurring users; as with Second Life, the biggest challenge facing Blue Mars will be retention, keeping users interested in a non-game metaverse.
And no, none of these are based on any insider knowledge or sources; strictly my speculation. What do you think?
Image credit: Linden Lab, Pocket Metaverse
I generally agree, though I think your assessment of Linden Labs' ability to grasp no-brainers may be optimistic.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 12:22 PM
I'll have to second this as being a bit optomistic, given the Lindens' past history.
Posted by: Bixyl Shuftan | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 01:52 PM
Whatever concurrency numbers wind up happening the important factor for concurrency is for M to make good on his promise to turn the trend around. As it is, unless something spectacular happens, there is no way it will hit your number Hamlet. But just going back up to where it was before the decline began in March/April 2009 would be a good start.
The Ogre platform is already 3D immersion on iphone. Sirikata is on ogre. Wouldn't it be great if LL ground up re-engineered SL to run on Sirikata? Already built in collada support etc etc. iPhone app support already there. Just need the UI, etc. We can dream I guess.
The only thing standing in the way of alternative grids is inventory transport. Once this hurdle is cleared there will be growth. But I have a hunch there will be some serious growth in these other grids. And you need to go add them all up because people are clustering in several separate grids.
Pretty hopeful prediction for Blue Mars. How about Anshe Chung's virtual world based out of Hong Kong that runs in a browser? http://www.frenzoo.com Any plans to go check that place out?
btw your blog is falling apart. You really need to cut back on the litter and crappy ads that don't load.
Posted by: Ann Otoole | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 02:24 PM
lol, that's a LOT of optimism
Posted by: Banana's Hubby | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 03:14 PM
Ann, what ads are having trouble loading?
Last year, SL gained over 100K uniques in a few months, and would have got us nearly 300K if the plateau didn't kick in. My hunch is improving the UI and first hour experience is good for 300-400K, while marketing if done right will add 100-200K more.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 04:16 PM
Pretty much agree with all that Hamlet. The Facebook link and iPhone app takeover are no-brainers (and better still some sort of link with one of the Facebook VW developers e.g. Playfish). But can't decide if LL are holding back on these until Viewer 2.0 and a major marketing push, or if they really haven't got their act together on them. We may well get 125K concurrency after a marketing push but if not sustained it may be back below 100K by the end of the year. And as for Blue Mars - am afraid it will either be in trouble by the end of the next year or will become a platform for various gaming scenarios.
Posted by: Hitomi Tiponi | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 05:29 PM
Monthly uniques will be a bit hard to measure now that the data isn't being published.
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 05:54 PM
Just re: those Hippo Viewer statistics - they are somewhat 'outmoded', the Hippo viewer hasn't been updated since early '09, so most users switched this year over to Meerkat & others.
Right now there's really no way of determining how big the OpenSim community is - unless you want to do something like track the visitors to the opensim website.
Posted by: Adam Frisby | Monday, January 04, 2010 at 06:27 PM
I think the opensim users will grow much much more. Since you can use the opensim as base for kind of "3d standalone applications" and incredible easily connect all the data to a conventional webapp - i think many many people will install their own "grid" - althought it is often just an single opensim in standalone mode. With tools like GridStarter you can easily switch between grids, avatar accounts and viewers.
Posted by: Bletaverse | Tuesday, January 05, 2010 at 06:14 AM
Look guys, if you predict each year as the year Open Sim goes big you will either be right (sooner of later) or wrong year after year.
I am guessing the later.
I think Hamlet has a solid two. The numbers are not from a third party. They are Linden's own little brew I recommend no one drink given they can't even cook them well.
The numbers are going to go down, then flat. Why? Well, Xstreet and a number of other people pi**** acts don't exactly spread the cheer no matter how some blog it.
Posted by: Adric Antfarm | Tuesday, January 05, 2010 at 08:04 AM
REally, Ann? It might be your system. It's all loading for me, and I'm on a pretty barbaric work system right now with an oppressive DNS blocker on it.
Posted by: Arcadian Vanalten | Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 08:36 AM
Well, i did not say that 2010 will be the year of opensim - as an rival to SL. But i think because its that cheap and easy to run an opensim there will be many opensims that are not used as a grid, but as (private) standalone applications. I think many creators will create their own opensim, maybe for practice or for RPG. In my oppinion it gives powerful possibilities. So, i think opensim is not neccesarily a SL alternative, and because of this i think much more users use it (as "grid" owners) beside their "normal SL life" - it is not that easy to count them. And anyway - i think it's hard to compare Software to Services, because OpenSim is like Apache (a open source server software), while SL is like Facebook (a closed commercial service) - at least for me.
Posted by: Bletaverse | Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 09:08 AM
"Second Life log-ins through Facebook Connect will be enabled
This is partly wishful thinking, but it's such an obvious and seemingly easy move, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't put into motion."
Wishful thinking indeed, since five days after you posted this, Facebook purged dozens (hundreds?) of avatar accounts.
http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2010/01/is-facebook-killing-avatars-again.html
However, considering Facebook's cavalier attitude about privacy, perhaps those purged SL avatars should be thanking FB for removing them.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php
Posted by: Lalo Telling | Monday, January 11, 2010 at 09:12 AM